That card is very old, and your onboard sound is probably better. Does your friend have the same set of speakers as you? That would make a bigger difference than a new sound card would. If you're really hell bent on buying a new sound card, you won't get away with spending just $20. If you're only looking to spend that much, you might as well just keep your onboard sound.

What does your friend have in the way of a sound card? You should be able to find cards like the X-fi extreme music for cheap on eBay that could make a difference, or if you have a stereo, hook the computer up to that instead.

I've pretty much explained all there is to it. There is (or was) an issue where Creative cards caused audiodg.exe to get a massive memory leak when you used features like CMSS-3D, and some others like the Equalizer. As I said, I'm not sure if they fixed it or not.

There is (or was) an issue where Creative cards caused audiodg.exe to get a massive memory leak when you used features like CMSS-3D, and some others like the Equalizer. As I said, I'm not sure if they fixed it or not.

I vaguely remember reading about it on the Creative forum quite a while back. It also only affected some of their X-Fi cards.
I'll see if I can find it

EDIT: OK, the bookmarked thread no longer exists, and I'm less than successful finding a clear answer anywhere really :/
I suspect, then, that this problem may well still exist, albeit on only some of the X-Fi models (my Elite Pro, for example, doesn't even use audiodg.exe, so was never affected to begin with).
I'm intrigued now! XD

I cannot find anything on the web that explains why you cannot have the same functionality from the latest drivers, nor should there be a difference in functionality between the 32-bit & 64-bit versions of the software.. :/